Keep Lazarus at the Elite Gym-Helpful Steps Inaugural Charity Ball Coming in October

Photo: Courtesy of Eksobionics TM

So, I have been a little redundant in terms of my blog posts over the past few months as I have been extremely busy working on a short video documentary. My last post may have served as a teaser or little hint that the topic of my documentary is bionic technology. The film centres around the story of Nathan Kirwan, a young man who, after a fall in 2013 suffered a C4 Spinal Cord Injury. It documents how Nathan and others are benefiting from using the Eksobionic Suit at the Elite Gym in my city of Cork in Ireland. The Elite gym is the only gym in the world that houses this technology. Other suits around the world are in rehabilitation and clinical settings.

For the past number of months, I have been following Nathan Kirwan, Spinal Cord Injury survivor and Colin O’ Shaughnessy, owner of the Elite Gym in Cork as they attempt to raise the much-needed €150,000 to keep a piece of ground- breaking wearable technology at the gym permanently. Affectionately known as ‘Lazarus’, the EksoBionic suit aids those with limited mobility to ‘walk’. This inspired me to make a documentary, Every Step I Take. Please take a look,

The charity www.helpfulsteps.ie set up by Nathan and Colin will hold the Helpful Steps Inaugural Charity Ball on the 10th October 2015 at City Hall here in Cork. It promises to be a spectacular night with lots of surprises and entertainment in store. Lazarus will of course make a very special appearance! Tickets are priced at €100 per person and you can contact Olive Downey on 086 3357424 to secure your ticket or email olive@helpfulsteps.ie. Click here for further details.

The Rise of Bionic Technology in Healthcare comes with a Hefty Price Tag

It has been reported in the media this week that Ray Flynn, an elderly British man is the first person in the world to have his sight restored using a bionic eye implant.

Mr. Flynn suffers from dry age-related macular degeneration or AMD which causes his sight to be significantly diminished and only allows partial vision out of the corners of his eyes.

Last month, however Mr. Flynn participated in a ground breaking medical trial during which surgeons inserted a device known as the Argus II to the outside of his eye.

So, here is the ‘science bit’. A tiny camera attached to the patient’s glasses captures a scene which is sent to a small patient-worn computer.

The scene is processed and transformed into instructions that are sent back to the glasses by using a cable.

The instructions are transmitted wirelessly to the retinal implant. The signals are then sent to the electrode array, which emits small pulses of electricity.

These pulses stimulate the retina’s remaining working cells, which transmit the visual information along the optic nerve to the brain, creating the perception of patterns of light.

Patients learn to interpret these visual patterns with their retinal implant.

The video below illustrates exactly how it works.

However, the cost is approximately €213,000 so unfortunately I don’t see the bionic eye becoming widely available in Ireland for quite some time.

Another emerging technology that I am currently researching for a short documentary project is the Ekso GT Robotic Exo Skeleton which allows wheelchair users and those with limited mobility to ‘walk’.

When users of this wearable technology shift their weight in the upright standing position, sensors are activated which initiate steps and battery powered motors drive the legs.

Those who have mobility need to stand and walk to stay healthy.  Those with limited mobility as a result of Spinal Cord Injury, MS, Stroke, Friedrich’s Ataxia and Spina Bifida also need to stand and walk to improve lung capacity, bone density and bowel and bladder function as well as staying fit and healthy.

In Ireland, there are currently 3 EksoBionic suits, 2 of which are in clinical/rehabilitation settings. The other one? It is in a gym here in Cork!

The Elite Gym in Cork is the only gym in the world that houses the EksoBionic Suit,  affectionately known as Lazarus, making it very accessible for users. It is currently on deposit since Jan 2015 and it will cost €150,000 to keep it in the gym.

Colin O’Shaughnessy , owner of the gym and world-champion kickboxer and Nathan Kirwan who is a C4 Spinal Cord Injury survivor established www.helpfulsteps.ie and have been fundraising since January this year to secure Lazarus’s stay at the gym.

Users from all over Ireland have been travelling to Cork to use the suit and have been participating in the Walk with Me Challenge at the gym to raise much needed funds.

The difference between the bionic eye and the bionic suit is that the cost of the bionic suit is achievable and the benefits are priceless.

Check out www.helpfulsteps.ie and http://www.gofundme.com/exoforireland if you would like to help. Every cent counts.

Big Brother is watching you and is closer than you think

I have been watching co-founder of WIRED magazine and sometime web prophet Kevin Kelly’s video from 2012 on his observations and predictions for technology into the future.

This is a follow-up from his previous Ted talk video in 2007 where he discussed how we as humans are building a single global machine, the web.

My response was curious one as I urgently searched through the drawers in my kitchen for some form of coloured tape to block out the camera on my laptop or what he describes as ‘the eye’. I do not regard myself as naive. I read Orwell’s “1984” when I was fifteen. Was George Orwell psychic? Why do I suddenly feel so paranoid?

As I listened intently to Kevin Kelly describing the ubiquitous screen that has infiltrated our culture, society and consciousness, the Telescreen in 1984 sprung to mind. Not only that but he goes on to explain how technology can track your eyes as you interact online so that your moods and emotions can be identified. Technological and web innovation will subsequently respond and adapt to our particular wants and needs.

What he calls the ‘eye’, I call ‘the cornea’, i.e. wearable screen technology such as Google glasses or the more recent Microsoft Hololens headsets.This is the convergence of an augmented world with a virtual world in order to create a single reality where devices are used to a much lesser extent. Devices may in fact become extinct. We may look back and reminisce about how ugly, cumbersome and unsophisticated the iPhone 6 was and scoff at the fact that we were once all ‘glued to our iPads’. It seems like we have already begun to give the web a body and its innards are advancing and restructuring at an incredible pace.

We are already co-dependent on technology. I have not memorised a phone number in years. I sometimes have trouble remembering my own number. The single most important thing for me to memorise these days are the multitude of passwords I use to log in to different sites. Google is my ‘go-to’ guy should I need to find out where I can buy the best masking tape to cover the all-seeing ‘eye’ on my laptop.

The invention of the Ekso Bionic suit is co-dependency done well. Irishman Mark Pollock, who as the result of an accident is paralysed has been pioneering the use of this technology to cure paralysis. This illustrates a meeting of the human brain and technological innovation. Unfortunately, the Ekso Bionic wear is not yet available in Ireland and even if it was, it is for now unaffordable for most.

Cybernetic totalist theorists believe that computer technology will become as powerful as the human brain in the not to distant future. Jaron Lanier rejects this notion for a few reasons in his One Half a Manifesto, one being that hardware and software will never match in their advancement for long enough at any given time, particularly computer software. He understands why cybernetic totalists might be inebriated by the very possibility but concludes that they lack humility and scientific skepticism.

This is to be explored again but he sums up with the following statement,

“Treating technology as if it were autonomous is the ultimate self-fulfilling
prophecy. There is no difference between machine autonomy and the abdication
of human responsibility”.

 Image:all seeing eye by Jentapoze